


Lone Star Jazz

by DannyBarefoot



Category: Carole & Tuesday (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate History, Celebrities, Drug Dealing, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Homophobic Language, Melodrama, Minor Violence, Music, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Violence, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Prison, Poverty, Rap Battles, Rap Music, Rare Pairings, Reconciliation, Recreational Drug Use, Refugees, Science Fiction, Threats, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyBarefoot/pseuds/DannyBarefoot
Summary: Carole/Amer. Four years later, Carole and Tuesday are setting out on their tour of Earth. This time, Carole has to find out what she feels for our favourite gangster boy.
Relationships: Amer/Carole Stanley, Roddy/Tuesday Simmons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

Humanity had given up on Earth even by 1969, according to the history books. The combined maximum efforts of the USA-USSR-PRC triple alliance had established a colony on Mars by the year 2000; a fresh start for humanity, at the cost of nearly all the Earth’s non-renewable resources. The world wars of the 2010s had followed, ravaging as much of humanity’s cradle as climate change had left above water.

Carole was sweating in the heat. She looked down from the open stage, over the refugees who had thronged to this camp in the ruins of Brooklyn. There were Mexican and Amindian faces, stony with resignation. Faces marked to the back of their eyes by famine or disease; untreated scars and fists curled around bottles of moonshine. Carole had seen the small children who carried knives; Earth had only got worse since she had been a refugee herself. There was anguish, insensibility, resentment…but a glint of hope in the children and their parents’ eyes. The people who still lived on Earth hadn’t quite given up on it yet.

Above all, there was a galaxy of smiles. Scarred children pointing in wonder to her and Carole for their smaller friends. Hanging off wreckage and fences for a better view, craning out of windows at one young woman in humble overalls, and another young lady in a fine but very well-worn white dress. Carole had felt the excitement those kids were feeling, when _Flora_ had sung for her refugee camp, nearly fifteen years ago. So, who could say that the songs she and Tuesday brought were only songs, or would vanish with them?

“Even if I was born on Earth–” Carole spoke boldly into her mic, “–I do _not_ know what every one of you has endured. But I can see in all your eyes that you _have endured it_! You are survivors, you are victorious, you are my inspiration! Let’s all of us keep working, keep talking, because you are the future! You are hope and peace!”

“In spite of every wrong, this is such a beautiful world,” Tuesday chimed in–she’d conquered her shyness years ago, “And all of you are beautiful people! Please, sing with us, and tell the world that you are here!”

There were only the two of them on the stage, with their keyboard and guitar, singing _‘Mother, mother, mother…’_ but that only gave their song a more valiant soul than ever. The crowd roared it back. Many with tears, for mothers lost or dead, but singing to Mother Earth and all its people to loose their chains. Guys who hadn’t let their mothers hold them for years flew to them sobbing, and watchers on Earth and Mars, though webcast, saw plain humanity for a while instead of an irritant problem. 

Then Carole and Tuesday sang _‘Someday I’ll Find My Way Home’_ , very quiet and gentle, mourning with the outcasts of Earth for homes they had lost or never seen. _Homes they would still find one day_ –so the girls sang to every one of them with all their hearts. It was a minute that commanded silence, prickled the scalp as if a spirit was settling upon it, and changed the direction of lives.

No one could have done it but Carole and Tuesday; they told the hopeless to have hope, and they believed. Matchless sincerity, above all else, had crafted the place near the top of the music world which they had preserved for four years. A few subsequent duos writing songs without A.I. had found some success, but very many more had failed completely. What these young women had could not be made with computers and factories, or even by ordinary human effort.

Tuesday’s blue eyes danced with the crowd, as she and Carole swung into their newest single. Shyness had made her seem plain at seventeen; at twenty-two she had blossomed into the golden beauty Carole had seen from the start. She’d turned down a lot of modelling offers. Young girls copied her look barely less than they followed Angela Carpenter, which had made her faint the first time she saw it. Future and past, Tuesday simply wanted to touch hearts with her music, and she would have been entirely tickled pink. Except that she alone could tell her partner, Carole, was barely herself together enough to get the right notes out.

Carole’s eyes had settled on one face at the front of the crowd, as they sang about melancholy love, and she _couldn’t_ see another face, however she tried. It had been all she could do to open their performance, once she had realised that their warm-up act was going to be _Ezekiel_.

"Let's hear it for them, Earth. The voices of Mars, in the flesh and on the ground! Carole Stanley, and Tuesday Simmons!" 

The once-famous rapper, her childhood friend, had only looked slimmer and more solemn, four years after their last meeting and his deportation from Mars. He had walked out in front of the stage with the strutting poise of an artist born, bare arms gleaming. Then he had moved both hands like axes, and stormed into a rap that had everybody nodding their head. Not one of his famous anti-establishment songs, since that wasn’t in line with Carole and Tuesday’s style, but a stormingly clever and powerful rap, of course. And whatever he sung, even if Mars barely remembered him, the people of Earth knew Ezekiel was one hundred percent solid. Carole knew there were many hard-bitten men in the crowd who would not have even listened to some privileged little girls from Mars, if Ezekiel hadn’t stretched out his lean arm to introduce them. Then hopped off the stage into their audience, where his eyes had never left Carole, and her gaze could no longer move from him.

Hadn’t his songs given her courage, set them on the path to their Seven Minute Miracle? Without his faith and words, when they’d been orphans together, would she have gone to Mars, or done anything special once she’d got there? Four years ago, he’d said in a song that perhaps he loved her, four years since she’d seen his face or heard his voice–but she’d missed two notes, even as she looked!

She had a song to sing, right now. Sincerity meant not letting some silly tremors around your heart keep you from sharing with the audience your soul. Carole screwed up her eyes and wailed to about melancholy love, as thousands of hearts and souls hung on her every note. Ezekiel, another man in the crowd, kept looking still straight up at her, with a strong face that looked like he hadn’t smiled in years.

-0-

They had begun their tour of Earth by taking Manhattan, touching down in JFK spaceport and playing to Madison Square Gardens. Manhattan in 2054 was a gleaming technocratic paradise, richer than any Martian city, but cut off from the desolate east coast by fortress-like bridges. Brooklyn had felt like another planet, and one they’d been grateful to visit, with a convoy of water, food and medicine for the camps. Pro aid workers would hand the goods out tomorrow–Carole and Tuesday had agreed they weren’t going to steal the thunder of better folk than them, for something so scummy as photo ops with cute, grateful children. They would talk to the refugees instead, about their dreams and talents–see if they could nurture some of the sparks that would give tomorrow hope.

Even under the eyes of bodyguards; Jamal and Mike were outside the trailer right now, with their guns. There were more kidnappings and attacks across the Earth each year than the year before, and Gus had refused point blank to take chances. The minders made Tuesday feel safer, though she had argued their message of hope would be stronger without them. It made Carole less comfortable to return home under guard, as if she were more special than any Terran refugee girl–but she had taken Tuesday’s hand and told her partner that she, Tuesday, would go with bodyguards or not at all.

Though all the ridiculously petty ‘hardships’ of their tour, Carole had been longing to take a walk in Memphis–Beale street would _always_ be Beale street, and, above all, the place her father lived. His parole hadn't come through in time for him to even leave the state, even now; living under the whims and fears of politicians was maddening _._ But _Carole_ would go to him herself, and play a concert of thousands for _him._ Show him how strong his girl had got, alone, and tell the world that Dan Stanley was a good man. She'd been burning for it. She was living her dream, she’d been riding on a wave…but now all she could see were two dark eyes, strong and unbitter, as she fidgeted on her bunk.

She’d never written to Amer. Her best friend. He’d written a towering, _kick-ass_ love song for her. He’d been deported back to Earth, she had never known what to say. She didn’t even know what she felt…except that it filled her, and it hurt.

She'd called her Dad, it had calmed her for a moment...but talking about boys or difficult feelings was tricky, with a man who'd spent two decades in a cell. Her father was there, but she'd never known how to be a daughter. It was enough for to them to say she was proud of him, and her loved her.

(Tuesday's father worked in Europe with his compliant new wife, and barely any time for his three new children as was. Tuesday had been accustomed to having no father anyway; it was an absence and a little ache for Carole and her to comfort between each other. A thread of her mending bond with her mother, as well) 

Sharing Carole's bunk in the narrow trailer, now Tuesday was wiggling with happiness over her text from Roddy, already in Memphis getting their next show ready. They’d been dating for a year and were planning a quiet wedding in six months’ time. Carole was very grateful it had been kept quiet, and the paparazzi weren’t doing their best to make her girl’s life a misery, so far–but she’d been planning to ensure Tuesday’s big day wasn’t _so_ quiet that it wasn’t _fabulous_. 

_Goodnight, princess. Keep bringing joy to the system and stay safe! XXXOOO_

“Goodnight, darling.” Tuesday whispered as she typed, “You stay safe, and keep being my favourite snugglebunny!” Carole heard no less than four kisses and four hugs in the sweetness of her tone.

“Think maybe he wants you call him your prince, or something?” Carole murmured.

“Hmm, but he’s more of a snugglebunny, or maybe a cinnamon bun. He’s so smart and sensitive, the cutest guy…”

“…and somehow he _still_ landed the most beautiful girl on Mars.”

“He most certainly did. When he gathered all his courage and told me how he felt, I was so, so…ooo, I don’t know what! Oh, Carole, I’m so sorry–something was troubling you today! Do you want to talk…?”

“…just hold me?”

Tuesday threw her phone away, turned around on the bunk, and nuzzled her way to Carole’s neck. The dark-skinned girl pressed a slim hand from Tuesday’s shoulders to the small of her back. She knew every curve and muscle where her tension gathered; she gently smoothed them out. Tuesday wound Carole’s pyjamas round her grip, and her partner sighed out sweet relief.

“Carole, you will always be my best friend. My first love and my last. You’re not going to lose me, ever...but Roddy loves me too, I love him, and I just can’t leave him alone. I’ll have new experiences, with him, I’ll be a stronger woman, and a better friend to you! We don’t have to always be the only lonely two; three or four is even stronger and better…”

“Don’t you cry, Tues.” Carole smiled into her eyes, “I’d never stop you loving anyone. Fly free.”

A refugee girl, spurned by Martians, spurning the crime-ridden Mars favela where Earth immigrants lived, Carole had been alone in her heart before she’d met Tuesday. As starving artists, then as paparazzi-hunted celebrities, it had been too hard for them to date, or meet guys–quite natural they’d grown so close. But Roddy was Tuesday’s choice. Carole would never have held her back, when she loved her girl more than anyone or anything in a thousand worlds. Most likely every girl in history whose best friend went and married a guy had felt much the same.

“Thanks for being with me, Tues. I'm okay now.”

With one kiss goodnight, Tuesday climbed up to the top bunk, leaving Carole alone in bed. The blonde girl eventually fell asleep, while Carole still tossed and turned.

“… _tears, they won’t dry_ …”

Tuesday had even offered to share Roddy with her; the quiet redhead would probably have been ecstatic, but Carole hadn’t gone for that. He was Tuesday’s guy, and the guy _she_ loved wasn’t going to be a gentle, cinnamon bun. Someone with strength to their kindness, so self-willed and irresistible that love was an impossible adventure…but was there anybody like that, apart from Tuesday and Ezekiel? Was there anyone _less_ like that than Amer, her sensitive childhood friend? The true self behind the hardened mask of Ezekiel…?

Why wasn’t it Tuesday she burnt for, who she loved and knew? She wanted to feel Amer’s true, real strength in his arms, watch the tiny movement of his lips as he smiled, find out who he really was. A dangerous gangster and rebel? The boy with a notebook of poems she’d always saved from bullies, everything unknown and intoxicating…?

She needed to sleep; but there was nothing she could do, except reach for her headphones. She’d lost count of how many times she’d heard his voice, and it always stirred a different cocktail of frustration, sorrow and heart-thrill.

_Outside, looking in,_

_Reached me on a place you've never been._

_See, I have the power of many men,_

_When I walk, you don't see a grin,_

_It's my ignorance with intelligence,_

_Militant move._

_You should never question the elephant,_

_I appear, yet I'm barely even here,_

_When you're not around._

_There’s no one that's allowed to see my tears._

_Adam to your Eve, apple of your eye,_

_Whatever the circumstances, know I'll end up on your side._

_Carole, hit you with the lovestruck arrow,_

_Feelings start to scat like Ella Fitzgerald,_

_Pharaoh, honestly, I meant to say pheromone,_

_You was always there since my parents was never home._

_Orphan, cracked fortune,_

_Protecting my precious orchid from evil forces,_

_Dormant, see the sky's not stormless._

_Monday is so heavy,_

_Hit you back on a Tuesday,_

_When things feel steady._

_Here's the prophet, the one and only who's laying there,_

_Forever known as E, ain't no need for the alias._

_I'm representing Mars till I feel like an alien_

_And you're the only star that I'll date again, love…_

_…days without your face,_

_It's hard to stay sane alone._

_I hate the time you're not here,_

_You're the closest thing to home._


	2. Chapter 2

_“…you finally did it! Pop fly! You the man, Amer Souleyman!”_

_In the same moment, Carole rolled skateboard down half-pipe and flew up into her own pop fly; she was still the best. When Amer got a go on their single board, he did it again. The first time had taken him four wipe-outs, but hadn’t been any kind of fluke._

_“Real skater boy. No lie, you looked like a badass. Remember that when those idiots pick on you, alright?”_

_“…Carole. There’s more to strength than just looks.”_

_“All you need, sometimes. I’ve beaten boys who punched harder than me.”_

_“But they beat you up, sometimes. I don’t like that, Carole.”_

_“That’s just the way it is. Loosen up. You’ll never get a girlfriend unless you’re a bit tough and cool, you know?”_

_Amer’s sidelong smile implied he wasn’t unhappy with where he was–sat in an empty skate park, under a vast cloud-painted sky, beside the toughest girl in the orphanage. Carole set him straight with a punch in the arm, but she sat with him a while because she wanted a rest._

_Age nine, she’d known Amer wanted some female loving–thankfully not from her–since she’d chased down three boys who’d stolen his notebook, again, and read it cover to cover. There were some outrageously soppy poems about his ‘amazon princess’, (whoever that was), and some fantasies so sizzling, she felt practically_ adult _as she put the book down. She’d asked him whether different Amers had written that crazy mix, or was he just crazy? The answer came (from the blanket-burrow of his embarrassment) that some days Amer didn’t know who he was and some days he just felt crazy._

_Carole had said she was really sorry for peeking, and some of his poems were wicked cool. He’d followed her like a big doggo since back then. She’d patiently told him to buck himself up, whenever he hid his tears in a toilet stall. A few times when she’d really broken down, he’d sat and talked softly, until her armour was back on._

_She’d never even thanked him–orphans couldn’t depend on anyone else._ _She’d even thought it might have been kinder to drop him, so he’d learn to be strong without needing her…but maybe she needed somebody to protect and patronise. Those stuck up sisters who told them pray, and be grateful, had always done that to her._

_And he did have a really cute smile. She had to glance away and whistle a spirited tune, that had just occurred to her that moment._

_“Hey, Carole? What do you want to do when you grow up?”_

_“Pro-skateboarder? Maybe run a food store? Then we’ll have something to eat, while you’re writing your songs.”_

_“I don’t mind if I never make big wolongs with a record contract. I want to write songs that change what people think and how they feel–but I’ll never inspire anybody unless I live my songs. I mean, I’ll support us some way, whatever it takes. I think that’s what Earth needs, most of all; people supporting and building together, with hope and pride.”_

_“Nothing building round here for years.” Carole glanced at the city of ruins and refugee tents surrounding the park–though the last war had been years ago, there were no homes for returning to. “Everywhere else is the same–but they’re building like crazy on Mars. No lie, Amer, your dreams belong on Mars. Not here.”_

_Amer made no reply. Eventually they went back to the drafty, ancient orphanage building. Where there was one ancient computer, half a dozen books, a few faded board games. Nearly a hundred frustrated, purposeless orphans and sisters; no musical instruments ever at all._

_Carole spun idly through a few steps of dance, on her way, wondering how it would be if she had one real dream, to Amer’s hundreds. He was smiling at her right now, as if at an untold secret. He looked so cute, maybe she’d wait a few years to ask what it was._

_-0-_

_A few months later, Flora came to the orphanage. She sang and smiled, gave out instruments and medicines, before her tour rolled on across the Earth–leaving Carole changed forever._

_She wanted to be a singer. System-famous, an orphan loved across the worlds; guiding all of them to the birthright of their dreams._

_She wanted to fill her music from her full and starving heart; if a rich Mars lady could do it, couldn't she? Practically_ _, she'd need concerts, contracts, streaming and MTV. Her only dream was only to be found on Mars._

_“I can’t go to Mars. Earth is our home, Carole. I’m sorry.”_

_In the yellow, polluted garden behind the orphanage, she’d stared into Amer’s eyes. He’d always looked on things she couldn’t see; she’d known but never felt it like this. She stared and tried to bury shock in silence._

_“They say nothing good comes out of Earth.” Amer was still talking, “Humanity’s cradle is a barren waste; nobody’s building and everyone’s going to Mars. I want to stay and make a change. It’ll be long and hard, but, but–who else is going to do it? You could do it. Earth needs us, and I need, I…you’re the best, the strongest girl on Earth! But you want to leave…”_

_“We don’t owe Earth anything. Our parents screwed the planet up, before they dumped us here. I ought to take the keyboard from the rec room when I go, but I won’t–another kid might need it, and they’ve got keyboards on Mars. They’ve got everything, except you…I know I can sing, but I can’t write lyrics for toffee! Carole and Amer! If we go to Mars, you could really change things. When the whole system hears your songs…but you can’t stay here. You could get sick again or shot, die like nothing, and I don’t want that!”_

_“But that’s the way it is, Carole. Alive or dead, I’m staying here. If you really want to go, follow your dream without me.”_

_The snarl heaved through Carole’s small body, as she threw her fist back. Amer’s arms hung at his sides; he only stared at her, one last time. She could only shake, start towards him, and finally run._

_She couldn’t cry when she found the men and told them she wanted to go to Mars. She couldn’t cry when she strapped into the barely-pressurised jalopy rocket with two-dozen other kids–built in the 20’s, for carrying ten adults to the Moon and back. You never showed weakness anywhere, or kids stole your food and beat you when they were scared. Carole had stolen food from other kids. once, but she hadn’t died and she would never, never cry._

_Amer hadn’t cried. Hadn’t called her a stupid, disloyal bitch, and he was the strongest boy she would ever know. She’d never known how strong; never, never known how hard leaving Earth would be._

_But Miss Flora had always smiled. Carole hadn’t thought much of that at first, when she was a superstar singer with pots of wolongs–but when she had sung, she’d seen that Amer had been right. When you had a dream of your own and followed it to the stars, you could smile through anything. The light in Miss Flora’s eyes–stars and cities and love–had gently turned Carole inside out and carried off her heart. Two worlds loved Miss Flora, for her voice–and Carole had a voice. She had a heart. She’d never liked beating on idiots, not really. She’d just never known how to live like Amer, with a kind smile…_

_When the walls of the spaceship creaked and the smallest kids screamed, Carole held them. When they were hungry, fainting with heat, or wailing for home, she sang to them. She would still have beaten up the kids who wanted more than their food ration, since that was life and death, but an older girl with a scarred nose took that job. Carole never found out what happened to her on Mars._

_Trapped in a sardine can rolling through endless night, Carole learnt about love. Kindness she’d never known in the cold orphanage, and knew she'd forever lost her chance to share with her lost best friend. She was sure, within a month, that she was going to die of dehydration or insanity between Earth and Mars. But she would reach for the stars as she died, and sing._

_-0-_

_Her first months on Mars, learning how the people smugglers meant her to pay her debt, was a merciful black hole in memory. Then the Mars cops had broken into the sweatshop. More months of courtrooms and dread had followed, before the nice D.A. lady finally told her; she had indefinite leave to remain._

_She was an unaccompanied minor, only tracable to the orphanage–and the fifth Pan-American Civil War had kicked off right after she’d left Earth. Unidentified rebels had levelled and burnt the orphanage; any survivors wouldn’t have lasted a month. Mars couldn’t send Carole back, and they needed warm bodies for the frontier that had been a cold, cancer-haunted gulag through the ‘20s. Mars, in short, welcomed illegal immigrants._

_There were many reasons why, just for once, Carole burst into tears. The one she remembered, and fought to forget for seven years, was that her best friend and all his dreams were dead. Too good for the Earth, too kind…she cried until it hurt, into her lawyer’s silk blouse._

_There was talk of adoption, but she ran from it; her parents had left her alone, and that was how she lived. She still received the token stipend that everyone got simply for living on Mars–a dazzling pittance, to an Earth girl. Enough to get a mobile contract and some decent clothes, eat Mars dumplings once a week, and start saving up for a keyboard. Of course, Mars was another world, but she stared between the A.I.-staffed cafes and 3-D print clothes shops as if into a different reality. There was silence on Earth, instead of laughter or kind words, and silence on Mars where she remembered the bombings and stray gunfire._

_Earth immigrants were pouring onto Mars, to escape the war, with cheap and laughable false papers. Some found menial jobs, but robots did them even more cheaply. The rest threw up their favelas on the edge of the dome cities and lived much as they’d done on Earth. Drinking, dealing drugs, and stealing each other’s washing at gunpoint._

_Carole scorned all of that, and all of them too. Earth had killed her friends and starved her childhood; she was a Mars girl to the death, and she would never go back. She was going to get a part-time job, buy that keyboard, then practise until her bleeding fingers held a contract._

_What was that, next to what she’d lived through? A few friends who’d survived the same passage from Earth were the only Terrans she had contact with, but infrequently. She suspected that they too wanted to leave all reminders of that perdition in the past, and smile brightly for the jobs that would begin their Martian lives._

_Of course, it took Carole a week to get sacked from her first proper job. The manager called her a useless Terran thug, which told her straight off what the Martians would think of her for the next eight years. In fairness, they’d generally never lived somewhere you had to fire a kick to the nads and run, when one of the guys staring at your butt grabbed your arm. Carole had seen what happened to girls who couldn’t kick or didn’t run._

_She moved on to the next job, a wandering Terran, cut off from the Earth Favelas and scorned by the Martians in the city. She still smiled and chatted with all the other part-timers, since contacts could keep you alive; she made a hundred acquaintances, but no real friends. All of them had their dreams–but how could you share them, when you could barely keep them alive? A guard she knew at the Mars Memorial Hall, during her brief stint as an usherette, suggested that no one ever had friends like they did when they were twelve. Carole kind of knew about that._

_After three years, homeless, alone and utterly broke, she would have headed for the favelas–if not for a silent Chinese man who simply gave her a bowl of hot noodles and a sofa in his junkroom. She knew the first wave of ‘immigrants’ in the 2010’s had been the surplus of China and India’s prisons; there weren’t very many of them left alive. The old guy kept his story and his sufferings to himself though, hunched on the stoop with his pipe. Like the chirpy A.I. alarm clock that Carole bought after the third job she’d overslept on, he was company. Sometimes you had to do without friends, but you couldn’t get by alone. She just hoped very much that the old guy felt the same way about her._

_She bought her keyboard; taught herself to play, year on year. She listened to every song by Crystal, Flora and Skip she could stream for free. She couldn’t have stopped tunes pouring from her head, and even strung some passable lyrics together–but nothing to touch the shining music of her mind. Not even anything good. Nothing could give voice and name to the feelings of her heart; alone, that voice would've screamed from her until she was torn to pieces._

_Year on year, Carole went home from her shifting cheap shifts to her empty junkroom. A few girls who might have been work-friends moved jobs or got fired; she lost them forever. She played songs without words on the bridge sometimes, swinging her shoulders before a crowd that didn’t care about her, until the local cop chased her away. Sometimes, it was a relief._

_She lived day by day, keeping her job and playing her songs alone. Turning her back on the endless dust storm of lonely tomorrows. Her dream, that even the horror of her passage had never killed, was finally starved to a coma by empty years._

_She could survive in Alba city, she was safe and free, she could play the keyboard. She’d almost forgotten why else she’d come to Mars, by the time she met Tuesday. The day true colour came back to her world._

-0-

After a sleepless night, Carole had to throw a lot of water on her face, and some concealer. For her own sake, really; the refugee kids she’d be chatting with face to face would see her shadows. She dabbed on some eyeshadow as well; steadied her hand to apply orange lipstick. Tuesday squeezed her shoulders and told her she looked fantastic.

Outside in the sun, Carole tried to listen to the scarred children more than she talked. Some of them wanted to be singers, some had been soldiers or sweatshop workers, and one boy obviously wanted to score a kiss with Carole Stanley _via_ the waterbottle he offered. Carole took a hearty swig–Gus had warned her about infection, but she could afford the treatment and she was tired of careful.

She found she had a _lot_ of kids to talk with, though, since Tuesday was so tied up with a babbling Indian girl, clutching a homemade computer, and her equally hyper boyfriend with a woolly hat (plus, her… _other_ broody boyfriend, with a scarred eye?). When she finally spotted Amer, he was exchanging serious talk and fist-bumps with his own fans. She had to try a while to casually catch his eye, feeling like a creepy groupie–not the strong, streetwise, million-wolong music star she bloody well was.

His eyes gave away less than a wall, but, somehow, she found herself facing him behind a tent–as Tuesday nodded and turned a brilliant smile on Carole’s fans, while their bodyguards headed off Ezekiel’s entourage for ID checks.

Carole stood and fought for breath. Terrified that the man before her would walk, or stand in silence, or speak…

“Amer, I’m sorry. I never called. I didn’t know what to do or say.”

“I told you, forget about me. I was a ganger, deported, I could only–”

“–hurt my reputation? Amer, people know my Dad’s doing life for murder. Some article said I leaked it myself, because Tues was getting all those model offers–it’s all crap, I don’t care, and you never cared what Mars thought of you!”

“I’ve got my image; my mask, my strength. Image and rep are all we’ve got in this biz. Maybe they’d call me a fame-hunting sell-out, if we’re seen together now. Maybe say you want more points for helping a poor Terran. Maybe nothing we do can be free.” The twist of his lip was somehow apologetic and sardonic. Carole stuck her lip out and clenched her fists, ready to bury them in her own burning eyes, “I’m guessing you knew I was alive on Mars, before we first met at Cydonia? Amer the dreamy poet was Ezekiel, gangster rebel. I’d changed. It was big of you, even speaking to me. Thank you, Carole.”

Carole _had_ known Amer was Ezekiel–she’d streamed all his raps–but she’d never had the words after so long alone. Maybe she’d feared a reunion like this. Amer _had_ changed, between Earth and Mars, but four more years hadn’t changed him at all. He had the same purple strings of hair, the same broad shoulders between his studded jacket and vest–the same bright, searching eyes, alone across two barren worlds.

Had four years changed her? A little taller; she was still skinny. Two extra years didn’t give Amer the right to tower over her now–but he _was_ a guy. And she had a softer shirt, the latest Timberland boots, and her silly designer makeup. She had gone to Mars and sang to enchant two worlds, while he’d stood up for all the other hated outcasts. She’d climbed a rainbow to heaven, while he’d fallen to Earth like Satan. What could she say?

“I’m sorry I left you–”

“Carole, you followed your dream. I’m never going to blame you for that. All my talk about Earth, I only stayed a month–some prophet–”

“You had to go, or you’d have been killed in the war! You didn’t give up your dream. You found Earth’s people on Mars, and you sung to give them courage.”

“And joined a gang. Carried a weapon and sold weed. Some rebel.”

“Not crack? No, you told them ‘drop the crack’! You stood up for our people and you’re still standing. I’m sure some of the stuff you did was stupid…but it was badass.”

Ezekiel met Carole’s grin–but he didn’t look so amused. Carole knew she didn’t really know jack about the gangster life, or what Amer had done to survive the years. The old pro-immigrant Mars had let in anyone with the cheapest false papers (though Amer had been alone and penniless…?), but papers for a real job had been gold dust. Even his stupid Earth papers had been burned with the orphanage by that stupid war–he’d been made an outlaw at age eleven, on both worlds.

They had very little time. Carole had a tour planned out, her fans and her father to see…but standing alone in the dust with the loneliest boy she’d known, after four years…she only wanted to see him smile again, real and true.

“What are you doing, now?” She spoke fast, “It’s got to be something good–hey, is it something you can tell me…?”

“There’s an underground nightclub on the edge of the camp. Meet me this evening, I’ll tell you.”

“It’s a date!”

Carole didn’t have the foggiest idea how she was going to get away from her bodyguards, or get to Amer’s side without being recognised–it was so crazy, she laughed. But Ezekiel’s smooth, impassive face had dissolved in shock with her last words, before she dodged out to grin at her young fans–if he could’ve done, he might have blushed. She wanted to see that face at least a thousand more times, before they headed out for Memphis tomorrow morning. 


	3. Chapter 3

“So, so is this a nightclub in a cellar, or _underground_ as in…?”

“Probably, both. Bigger worries on Earth than liquor licencing.”

“…be careful.”

No need for Tuesday to ask if Carole was going, or why, or say that she was just as excited. A quiet clasp of hands said all they needed. Again, why was she risking so much for Amer when she would never find a love like Tuesday’s?

But Amer was Amer. They’d shared something bright, brittle and unique, lost years ago, and now she wanted what he held out. She wanted to know what he’d really been doing, all this time. What could be done for Earth and Mars–Ezekiel would know. If what she had been doing, singing lovely, hopeful songs, was worthy of her–or him? A force from within her own chest was pulling, and she could barely sit down to plan her evening’s secretive caper.

The news-sites which had touted Carole as a model for young black women would be tearing her down before dawn, if she were recognised in a shady club. Tuesday had some dresses she hadn’t worn in Manhattan, however, and everyone in the system knew that Carole Stanley wore overalls or miniskirts. Shades and a narrow-brim hat, prepared for just such an emergency, completed her rather fabulous disguise.

Tuesday rolled up Carole’s bedding to fake a sleeping body and promised she’d faint or chip a nail to distract their minders–she had a bit of experience with escapes. Carole kissed her goodbye. She had to stop behind a broken wall to reapply her lipstick and check her hair.

Amer was already waiting for her. He straightened up; heat rose to Carole’s cheeks. Amer’s gold necklace was gone, but he still rocked a simple white shirt and studded jacket. Even back on Earth, in the Disunited States, he’d come out to meet her with no gun or knife about him. Alone; a few of his old gang brothers from Mars had fallen to Earth with him, but they would have made Carole.

“New look?” He looked over her deep red, lightly frilled stage dress with a slight smile. “Bold of you. It fits.”

“It’s Tuesday’s. All I could find for a quiet night out. Do you think it’s okay…?”

“Even in the camps, all kinds of people with all kinds of clothes. And some girls never need to worry about them.”

“Smooth talk already! Serious?”

“Always. It’s my fatal weakness.”

Carole got that. Ezekiel was a mask of strength, not OG Bulldog bull. Ezekiel would never lie, never hesitate, never threaten or promise a thing he wouldn’t do. Strength rested on his shoulders like the darkness–though she saw Amer’s heart shine from his eyes. Because of her–four years ago she’d left him in prison, glanced back at only grim endurance. She was crazy, she didn’t deserve to stand here now…but his gaze pinned her to this moment and place where their divergent paths had dropped them.

“I told you, forget about me, Carole…can you do that tomorrow? I’m glad to be here, right now. On Earth, with you. Shall we go?”

Nothing in his life had brought him down; Carole’s smile was proud. And she had to remember; she was rather special herself.

Chin held high, she followed Amer down to the cellar of a bombed-out townhouse. She let him pay the doorman with a battered bionic arm and nosechain, for both of them. She could tell it mattered to him. She also made out that Amer was sub-O.G. here, decently respected. These places graded men rigidly as any feudal court or modern company, though girls prepared to belong to men could get anywhere. Yet another reason why she’d never been with a man herself, at twenty-two. 

The club was crammed with dark, gyrating bodies flicking sweat from their hair. Thicker weed-smoke than Skip’s trailer, though the head-pounding music was thicker and more dizzying. The cellar had been divided with walls; it took some shoving before the green-lit bar and stage came into view. Even in refugee camps there was money, and ways of making it. Most of the clubbers were armed gang thugs or black marketeers, and Carole tried not to look at the women. Whooping and singing, or stoned, or high on the worse stuff, for now. Dancing on the edge of destruction.

_He walked through the rain and he walked through the mud,_

_Till he come to a place called the Bucket of Blood._

_He said “Well bartender, it’s so plain to see,_

_I’m the bad motherfragger known as Stagger Lee…”_

She’d worked part time with girls who’d finished up working in such places; she’d sworn years ago she never would. The music hammered in her head, hissed macho blood and sex in her ears–but she had to meet eyes and nod her head, or they’d see this wasn’t her world. Recognise her, and then Carole Stanley could fall in one evening, like anybody…the lights switched from deep-forest green to infernal red. This really wasn’t her kind of place–she loved open streets, and music where you could hear the notes–but she knew why Ezekiel had brought her here.

With a nod and grave smile for all, he moved almost freely through the cellar’s packed confines. He shared a fist-bump and half-embrace with a huge man who had a gun stuck in the front of his pants and _Straight Outta Compton’s_ lyrics tattooed on his bare chest. Women batted their green-shadowed eyes, and Ezekiel paid them the slight notice Carole supposed rappers had to pay–or their manhood would be doubted, which could be deadly.

“Still saying the Martians ain’t so bad, drekhead?” Roared another guy–with planet Earth tattooed on his right pec.

“If I was back on Mars, I’d be shouting all their wrongs in their ears. But I’m still here. Buy you a drink, you brass-neck recalcitrant?” The Earth supremacist roared with laughter. 

Across the club, a punch was thrown–who could say why? Fighters writhed against the walls of bodies as the bouncers moved in, and Amer’s game street-chatter didn’t even slow–but he had gripped Carole’s hand. She saw through the neon and his mask as his eyes turned to her; there was as much he hated here as he loved; systems on the streets as well as above them needed to break. 

“You worked joints like this? The last four years?” She shouted in his ear, over the pounding R&B.

“Since our home burned. To survive. I only sing what I see.”

Carole understood. She found she was clinging to Amer’s arms with both her own, just like a rapper’s girl. The women around them glanced with amusement at her dress. Her even stare gave back; my man, not yours. His heartbeat on her arm was accelerating, with the music’s beat. In for a wolong…

“Buy me a drink, while you’re at it?”

-0-

Carole collapsed onto a bench an hour later, with sweat in the small of her back and a light head. On one drink she’d kicked her heels up, spread her arms–danced with all her strength, and with Amer. Since she’d been born, moving her body had been another music. Brushing against the dreams wound tight at the bottom of her soul and flinging up rainbow sparks from them, at last. Telling herself and telling the world it was no crime to dream. No masks, no rules, no chains–Earth and Mars had put chains on her, but music and love had set her free. With Tuesday, with Amer… dance was always communication. What was his message for her?

He moved with perfect control, not from training but years of mindful practise; it was breathing-catchingly raw and human. More passion than pleasure–that was Ezekiel all through. Million-carat confidence, as his eyes met hers, across a distance…they’d made sparks brushing hands and pulled off sick moves together. But the desire that moving with such a man had lit up in Carole was still raging unsated.

Amer kept his distance. Forgetting all else, Carole had backed into him; he’d gallantly stepped round her into a quick, strong embrace. There was admiration and love in his eyes; they’d loved each other some way since they’d been kids. But they’d lived years apart, in different world, and Amer’s decision to let her go was unwavering.

“…Amer, I’m really sorry I never…you’re a fine man. You grew up a good man, the best. You never let these places take your kindness, or your vision…I know that! I’m sorry I never…asked you to marry me four years ago! You could’ve stayed on Mars, I thought of it too late…!”

“Don’t you say I’d ever live a lie like that, or you would. And it wouldn’t have worked–Mars Immigration ain’t no fool, just a brute.”

“I didn’t…I thought I didn’t know you then, but you were always Amer! I’m sorry…can I write to you, stay in touch from now on?”

“About weather and small talk and nothing? Everything worth saying for us can’t be said in words. Never be sorry Carole–I never wrote you. Your reputation, all you built–”

Carole reached across the bench and gripped Amer’s hand. One eyebrow rose, but he didn’t move.

“You wrote me the greatest love song ever, and I was too busy with building my stupid career to write! With Tuesday, with our songs…”

“I know how hard you worked, four years. What they make us give.” His eyes were pitifully strong, “You made the right choice, and you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Just seeing the stars in your eyes and feeling the warm blood in your hands is enough. I’ve still got songs of my own.”

For Crystal and Skip, love hadn’t been enough–she’d told Carole the story. Integrity brought tragedy; she’d refused to give her own early blossoming gifts or her lover less than all her soul. Carole hadn’t thought she’d ever go through the same thing, but she’d hoped it might be more bittersweet than this tearing pain.

“It’s not fair on you. You’re still stuck on Earth, things _still_ aren’t right for immigrants on Mars…they still sing your songs, but you should be there to hear them!”

“Should be there to write them better songs. Rap should be an explosion, that moves and grows, smashing into a new future for today. Four years ago is the past.”

“And you haven’t changed. Never change. But tell me about your new songs, what we can do about Earth, Mars and their future. Is that serious enough for you?”

Before Amer replied, there was a familiar movement around the stage, and the music dropped. An MC with an Assyrian beard strutted up and started working the crowd up; Carole and Amer naturally added their cheers. Carole rather indiscreetly stood up and whooped when a young mixed-race woman, with stained blue overalls but determined eyes, took the stage. Female gangster rappers needed all the cheers she could give, as jeering obscenities all through the house made abundantly clear.

Carole could guess this Morgana chick wouldn’t have got through the door of this place, let alone onstage, unless she was very good. Sure enough, the crowd were thrumming like a guitar string and pumping their fists under her beat–a rightly topical and outspoken rap on the subject of two singers from Mars, presently touring Earth. Carole could only think, she should have seen this coming.

_“…got our Barbie-blond princess from the power elite,_

_An’ her little black mammy, ain’t they just so sweet!_

_‘I’m so lonely with my wolongs, all high up in space,_

_Maybe throw a bone to Carole, lets me_ sit on face!’

_Army of two? Who they fighting for?_

_The people of Earth you can not ignore!_

_Sure, they sung ‘Mother’, one time, way back,_

_Only took seven minutes, and it don’t mean jack!_

_All Mars looking down from a tower star-high,_

_Iv’ry, singers, leaders, fences white, and black can die!_

_‘Earth don’t mean dirt’ is white Mars refrain,_

_‘Til their blood on the street paint it red again!”_

To whoops and cheers, Morgana thrust her fist holding the mic to the celing. Rappers used their body as well as their voice to stir up their fans–and her mincing, hair-twirling impression of Tuesday had enraged Carole as much as her lies. She didn’t doubt that male rappers had flung the same sexist slurs at Morgana since she’d first lifted a mic. So, she’d done the same to someone even more hated and helpless…Carole knew Earth ‘s people had beefs with Mars, but this was tearing apart, not mending, even with quaffing laughter. She wanted to get onstage and try to kick Morgana as far as Canada, but she found herself looking at Ezekiel.

“Stay here. Stay safe.”

Then he was pushing through the crowd like a snake and leaping onto the stage; he didn’t glance back at Carole or speak a word to Morgana. The whole club knew what this meant. Of course, they also knew Ezekiel had lived on Mars, so he was already getting booed–but cheered by the vast majority, for whom an unscripted rap battle was better than a dogfight. The MC urbanely passed his own mic, and stepped well back.

Ezekiel’s body spoke a thousand words without motion–his stance was immovable. Momentary silence ran chills down Carole’s spine, all the way.

_Here's the prophet who fell to Earth from Mars._

_Gonna tell the truth that’ll leave some scars._

_They got rich and poor up on the edge of night_

_They got fools like you, it ain’t black and white!_

_Black and white brothers, that is what King died for,_

_Tearing risers down, that is what you lied for!_

_Tu’day earn her dough, she ain’t no ho,_

_Carole ain’t no mammy, got her own sick flow!_

_Back on Mother Earth, some build sky high,_

_Some wanna dig soul deep, before they die._

_Gotta find a new song, girl, gotta take your life back,_

_Gotta break the solar system, gotta drop the crack!_

It wasn’t just Carole who called back the last line–four years on, _Crash the Server_ still got play. They would have chanted it into another verse, as Ezekiel spread his arms, if Morgana hadn’t howled her way into a counter-rap;

_Yeah, give a big hand, and maybe one more,_

_To the blackest white knight that I ever saw…_

Ezekiel had been called worse on Mars. Even more vicious insults struck him like water off a stone. It visibly impressed the crowd–but when Ezekiel’s next response still had more calls to action than hardcore disses, they made their displeasure clear. Ezekiel had never even dissed Valerie Simmons in person, another prisoner of the system and abused abuser; he faced their jeers just as stoically.

Still, by acclamation and a slim margin, Ezekiel won the battle. The MC lifted his arm like a boxer, and the stage was swiftly cleared for a renowned local rapper; the main act to Morgana’s warm-up. The rapper girl from Earth stalked away backstage, Ezekiel went to Carole’s side, and Carole could not hear a single word the next act was roaring. Nothing but one voice and moving lips.

“Amer, can I…?”

She had to stand on her toes, and she had to lay arms around his neck. Nothing left in her mind but his embrace, safe and strong, and the first time she’d kissed a boy. Kissed Amer…for the last time. One night together, that might have fallen from another world. Carole and Amer, one night only…with a sigh like a sob, she savoured the texture of Amer’s lips for every moment she could.

-0-

“Carole, you sure…?”

“Did I seem like I wasn’t sure? A girl should do one stupid thing, like swooning over a gangster or kissing her friend.”

“If it’s both, isn’t that two things?” Carole smacked his chest and laughed, “I can’t say I just did that for you. Anti-Mars drek like that is poison on the streets.”

“I guess that’s how they feel, on Earth? Mars takes everything from Earth, except the poor?”

“It isn’t even a lie. The more immigrants, the more resources Mars could take. Had to do it to survive, at the beginning–” Carole saw shadows in Amer’s eyes, “–but then they built their paradise, wanted it safe, thought that meant _pure_. It’s true that Mars can’t hold us all, and Earth needs us here. But when immigrant meant Terran, jobless, criminal, terrorist, _black_ –they poisoned the truth with fear and stole the future. They took lives. But you can’t fight a lie with guns, or bombs; that was what burned our home, wrecked the Earth, forty years–and it would’ve smashed the dome cities of Mars in a week. Four years ago, Earth hated Mars from here to New Washington, and they were ready for the war to frag up everything forever–until a couple of girls sang their little, brave song. I never said before, Carole…you were incredible.”

“Thanks…but it was Angela, Crystal and everyone singing together, more than the song–and we’d never have gone for it without the courage you gave us. We had to do something…and we should’ve done more since then…” _And we could’ve been talking every day, like this, about the truth and the future, with our hearts pumping together…_ “What do you think of Mars, now? Would you want to go back? Or stay here and build up Earth, like you dreamed before?”

“Hard to build when you’re fighting for life, every day. Hard to write songs that bang, when you’re starving. That Morgana’s got the gift, could’ve been the next Carole Stanley, on Mars…but on Earth? She’ll likely never be heard past Brooklyn’s streets. Earth’s frozen in the heat like amber–Mars is the future. Not A.I. and spaceships, and Martian slums; only new ideas, expressions, can make a freer future than the past. Flora, Desmond, Toboe, _you_ , all on Mars, where there’s hope and a future…four years ago, I lived in the future. I’m yesterday’s news now…but it was enough, you know? I had my vision; I fought my fight.”

“No, you’re still fighting, Amer! You’re still thinking, of a way to save the Earth.”

“Four years, not much else. Nothing yet, but it’s the only way. Don’t think I’m missing Mars; I’ll never see it again, and that’s the way it is. I’ve got rep here, still, and brothers...”

“You friends?”

“Guess so.”

“…Amer, the truth is, Mars was where we grew up. Mars was your home.”

Amer’s answer was a hollow, silent look. Carole didn’t know how he’d lived on Earth, what he’d done, but she knew he’d never make a home on Earth. The closest thing to home was her. When they’d had no one but each other–before war had cast two kids alone into empty space. You could live with being lonely, Carole knew. But she didn’t know how Amer could think of letting her go, in an hour, or she him, with such a darkness in his eyes.

-0-

Amer had left Carole on her own, to sing his piece, but everyone had been watching the stage. They were half-way to the door, she was thinking about holding Amer’s hand, when a man with a bottle in his and dragons tattooed down his arms staggered against her. He slurred something obscene, staring at her face–

–then Amer was gripping her shoulders. Moving her away, standing between them.

“Watch yourself. This is my woman.”

It was the language such men spoke; the smartest, safest lie to get them out. There wasn’t rage in Amer’s face, only strength–Carole had always been the one with the temper.

She twisted out of Amer’s grasp and spun back to face him, ready to tell both Amer and the tattoo guy some truth about who she was, and what they were being. She was facing Amer, as a buddy of the tattooed man swung a fist with a crack into his left eye.

She’d always known who Amer was–never known what Ezekiel had done, could do. Watching her childhood friend beat two men senseless in a club (or kill them, like her Dad had killed…) had never been what she’d wanted to see. But what she’d never above all wanted to see, and was about to, was two men kicking her friend until he was dead.

Screaming like an amazon, she drove in an elbow with her leg muscles behind it. One man stumbled off-balance, the other seized her wrist–she’d learnt how to break wrist locks, but she couldn’t. He was too strong. She was too scared. She had to guard her face–

Then a pitiful howl, and she was free. Amer had reached up from the floor, grabbed something soft and twisted. _Never get up when you’re down in a fight_ , Dann had told her that. Guard your head and hit back any way you can.

The tattooed man screamed something, raising his boot. Amer kicked his leg out; he fell against a wall of clubbers like sharks thrashing around a scent of blood. Ezekiel could have been trampled to death without malice or meaning, if Carole hadn’t caught his hand as they struggled up.

Her dress, she quickly noticed when they’d gained the open night air, had been practically torn off her body–her bare legs shivered in the wind. Even Amer had picked up some new rips in his jeans, along with his swelling black eye and glassy expression from the headpunch. He slumped against a wall, gazing up at the starless sky. All that seemed to be holding him up was Carole, clinging to his chest.

“They could’ve had knives. You could’ve been killed, oh, Amer, Amer…frag them, frag Earth, and fragging frag Valerie Simmons…”

“Deserved it, for what I said. Carole, I’m sorry. We’re not safe here, I’ll get you home–”

“No, I’m getting you home, Amer. I don’t want to be away from even a second…I’m not letting go of you again.”

-0-

Amer had rented a room, for the weekend of Carole and Tuesday’s Brooklyn concert, in a rot-darkened and ruinous tenement building. The refugees trying to sleep on the stairs were so sunken in their troubles that Amer and Carole could slip past.

He lay on the mattress in his bare room that was nothing like a home. She cleaned his cuts as best she could; there was no ice to hold on his eye, so she held her hand to his chest.

“Can I say, you were…?”

“Don’t you dare say badass. I’ve never been better than those thug fools, the ones who’ve been wrecking Earth for years–except when I could really rap. Violence doesn’t change a thing; you’re better than that, Carole.”

“So are you, Amer. You’d never do wrong unless you had to, you’d never boast about it like some stupid gangster, and you saved my fragging life.” The silence was full of heartbeat, “Amer…have you ever had to kill a guy? You know about my Dad, you know I won’t–”

“Self-defence. Sometimes, that means hurting them before they hurt you. Or robbing as many people as it took, to get false papers, get the frag off Earth. Twelve years old, with a gun…I’ve never killed, but that was only how it turned out. Someone who’ll do anything it takes to stay alive…isn’t the kind of guy who should even be touching you, Carole.”

“Did you drop _Crash the Server_ for your own sake? You gave up your future, for the sake of our people! Would you see me hurt, or your crew, for anything? I know you, Amer! I don’t care what you’ve done, I’ll forgive everything you can tell to me. You were my sweet friend, you’re the kindest boy on Earth, and you could never have sung songs of truth if that wasn’t so.”

Carole’s face was sharp and determined as a pebble, clear as a pearl. Amer’s face was breaking into the first true smile he had known for years.

“…still, I don’t want to give it up for a guy who won me in a barfight.” Carole went on, with a teasing grin, “Maybe you’ve got something else? I’ve always loved…your words, Amer. You’re an amazing guy like that.”

“Tell me this is a dream. Tell me I’m crazy. I knew we’d never be together, two wandering stars– always knew, all I could do was love you. My dream, my rest, my hope…but what future? Carole…”

“Can’t we make our own future, Amer? Can’t you just take it?”

Tuesday felt his resistance break; her body caught fire with expectancy. She’d sort of known for four years, Amer had always loved her, but when he held her now she felt the longing of every minute. She felt the loneliness of her beautiful man in an ugly world, in the tightness of his arms. She kissed her love back, desperate with a need to love him.

She thrashed her legs as his lips bore her down. He made her hot and stringy with need, but she summoned the strength to roll him and get on top. Then she pulled off what was left of her dress, smiling like a fool into his storm-dark eyes.

Amer's hands were gentle on her hips. Her skin was taunt with magic as a keyboard, beneath his fingers. He could be so very gentle. He could be a living explosion. 

"Show me how much you dreamt of this, my Amer. I'll show you how much you're loved."

Body to body meant soul to soul. It was the first time she’d done this dance, but more than ever, for the only man she loved, she was giving it her all.


	4. Chapter 4

The receding waves of her first orgasm rolled over Carole, in perfect time with her breaths. From under the delectable sea, she heard Amer rolling the condom off of himself and getting rid of it. She hadn’t been on the pill, hadn’t thought of anything but love…she’d given her first time to a good man.

She hadn’t even expected to climax, with all the chains of their past and present knotted through her body. Sex and love were more than that. But Amer’s patient, mindful passion had birthed a furious sun beneath her skin. Burnt everything else away, as love tightened her world to one tiny, precious spot. Then supernova-screamed every drop of it out.

A morning breeze through the tenement window pleasantly cooled her sweat. Amer was a glistening shadow, kneeling above her. Striking a match. Was that a roll-up…?

He kissed her lips as she sat up, before he took a hit and breathed out. Filled her world with dream-swimming weed-smoke. Carole giggled, yoinked the joint from Amer’s mouth, took a drag herself.

Cannabis made love to her afterglow. Delicious hunger, invincible peace…every compromise and lost dream that had cursed her life just vanished in rising smoke. Even a fit of helpless coughing in her lover’s arms was so worth it.

Lying back on the mattress, Amer reached round the curve of Carole’s back to gently squeeze her rear. She laid her head and hand on his chest with a dopey grin. Their bodies were a glorious universe, brown on warm brown, filled with smoke and song beyond words.

“Carole, I always–”

“–I felt it, Amer. I know. The way you touch me... _amazing._ Loved it.”

The care in his eyes. Pure as orphans sharing one skateboard, with every street-hard wall broken in ruins. The song he’d sung for her, but she’d had a world to save, too late…she buried her face in his neck. Took another hit.

“…uh. ‘You take the ‘erb, it reveals you to yourself.’ Marley said that, you know? Ugh, it feels _good_ to be a bad girl.”

“‘Everybody should eat hash, exactly _once_ ’. _Dali_ said that.”

Amer stole the joint back while he was kissing Carole, then finished it himself. Carole didn’t regret the trade. Her lover’s beautiful mind had taken in Dali, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Achebe, Ellison...everything in the digital libraries which didn’t exist on Earth, for poor orphans. Carole knew neither she nor Amer would ever have conceived their songs if they had stayed together on Earth. It was a bittersweet thought. 

“Mm… doesn’t cannabis help with pain? Does your _eye_ feel better?”

“Yeah. Everything does.”

“Why on Mars is that stuff _still_ illegal?” Carole stared unsteadily at the vanishing joint between Amer’s fingers, “That shiner looks bad. You should’ve lit up, soon as we got in.”

“Could’ve ended up giving you drugs, before we…got together. I didn’t want that for you, princess.”

“Oh? I’m ‘special’, am I?” Carole scratched at Amer’s smooth, solid abs like a playful cat, “How many groupies did you sweep off their feet to get that _good_ , mister loverman? Mister gangster-rappin’-bad-boy _playa_?”

“Three. One steady. Not proud.”

She could hear he wasn’t. Hear the pain of lonely years in his voice, just like hers.

“Sorry, Amer. Really sorry. You want to…?”

Kelsey Lloyd had been another Earth orphan with no school and no skills, except doing whatever it took to stay alive. She’d been working in a bar when they’d met. Her relationship with Amer had begun as a lie; he protected her, she shored up the image of a manly, no-homo gangster that his life depended on. The beatings and verbal abuse of her last three men had killed any hope of happiness in that line, she’d said and they’d both thought. But after months of closeness and Amer’s unwearying kindness, they had decided, without exchanging a word, to try.

She’d left for Mars last year, once she’d saved up Wolongs for the smugglers and rebuilt in Amer’s arms what abuse and helplessness had destroyed. She had shed tears, but she’d smiled as she left him. She’d only wanted the strength to stand on her own; among all that Amer had ever wanted, her happiness was all he had hoped for.

“…girl was so dumb, to ever leave you.”

Amer knew Carole didn’t mean Kelsey. His arm held her closer still.

“…what about you? Uh, did you and Tuesday ever…?”

“ _In your dreams!_ ” Carole laughed, kissed Amer’s cheek, almost sobbed, “In all our dreams. We shared a bed lots, and we kissed sometimes. Fearful lonely times when we both needed to feel the love. We loved each other, always…but the paparazzi would’ve screamed, if we’d gone all the way. Screamed twice because we’re both girls, the fraggers.”

“Bastards.”

“Tuesday wouldn’t have stood for hiding how we were, and no way she could’ve loved me in a multimedia _fishbowl_ , with her tender love… _maybe_ she could’ve done it, like she braved so much. But she was my best friend, muse, partner, _everything_ to me. I couldn’t risk losing all of that forever, for…love. I never did. She’s _still_ my everything, she’s just getting married in six months…but I’ll find someone else, one day. I won’t be lonely forever…”

Her voice shook. Amer’s rough lips were gentle on her brow.

“I couldn’t give everything for you, Carole. Kelsey–those dumb one-nighters–when I was on Mars, I could’ve come to you, but I didn't–”

“You had a world to save. You were Ezekiel. Brilliant, fearless, righteous, I even loved you a bit back then…” Carole clung to Amer’s chest, his heartbeat’s strength, “You didn’t just pine like some white knight. You fought for our people with your songs. You cared about women; I know you treated all of them right. You’re a good, good man, Amer. You should be happy. Tuesday told me you can’t put everything on one person–three or four are stronger than two…”

“Still, she’s getting hitched. I’ve got bros, here on earth, but nothing like we had when we were kids. She ain’t wrong, but right here, right now…there’s nothing but you and me, princess.”

Carole raised her head. Looked into Amer’s eyes, as he looked into hers. Hands were lighter upon bodies now, as they considered Carole and Amer. Their love, their worlds, their loneliness. Her chivalrous gangster boy, fallen and frozen in time. His singing Mars princess, stepping down to Earth for one night only.

“Earth isn’t so bad, I guess. Not in the morning, all the people waking up...not with you. I could…”

“…no. Mars is the future, your home. Don’t you dare throw away what you’ve got, Carole. I dreamed about tonight, since forever…always there for me, too dear for this Earth. One night and a dream…that’s enough for me.” 

He could never live on Mars again. Carole couldn’t leave Mars, where Tuesday and her music were. Even if they got hitched to get his ticket, Mars Immigration would call sham marriage. Carole knew Amer would never have let her go through it for him, so she didn’t ask. Saying she’d _write_ him– even when she would, some day–would’ve desecrated their night of dreams. She couldn’t even say she loved him, not when she would be gone with the dawn–and Earth’s blazing cloud-blurred sunlight through an empty window had never pressed her heart so close to the point of bursting.

Had she always loved him? Amer and Ezekiel? A life’s worth of bitter endurance had made love hard for her. But like flowers through cracked asphalt, like her lips diving towards Amer’s heart, love found a way.

“Carole. Carole, you need to go home now. Night’s candles…are burnt out…”

“Oh, keep up that sweet sexy talk, I will never let you leave. You’re the coolest man in the system, Amer Souleyman. Just let me…please…”

Carole caught Amer’s mouth, rolled his lower lip between her own. His taste, cannabis, sweat and love, made her grin with bliss. Like a girl possessed, she pushed Amer down onto the mattress and started kissing down Amer’s chest. She couldn’t stay, she couldn’t even say she loved him in words; the only way she could tell him her feelings was this.

Protests died in Amer’s throat. He wanted Carole to be safe–but he’d wanted her from forever and he’d given too much. All bitter hardness melted off from muscles, as his eyes went wide. His fingers stroked Carole’s neck and hair until she purred, and his lips poured song like happy tears.

_“Girl, you're my angel, you're my darling angel,_

_Clos’n my heartbeat you are to me, baby._

_Shorty, you're my angel, you're my darling angel,_

_You're my friend when I'm in need, my lady…”_

“Carole, I always loved you. Always will. You were in my heart on Earth, on Mars–through all the darkness in between–and you will never be away from me while I can sing or dream. Oh, Carole, Carole, my amazon princess. My muse of fire, sweet singer of Mars, my love…” 

Gasping, Amer drew Carole’s slim body up in his arms. Kissed her as if for the very last time, because it was.

The candle burnt down; the dream ended. If they were even seen together in daylight, Carole and Amer would become something the paparazzi owned, not them. Carole had to finally wrench her hand from Amer’s hand like a fingernail. Do what little she could to fix Tuesday’s ruined dress. Slip away like a one-night conquest from the man who watched her under dawn’s deep shadows. Eyes hard with silent devotion as the trampled soil of Earth itself.

-0-

Getting back to Tuesday and their trailer–in the shredded dress and soaking underwear of last evening, still high as a kite–would have been a tale in itself if Carole could have described or imagined how she’d done it. Nils and Bridget, two more of their bodyguards, eventually found her hiding in an alley and bundled her into their hire car with a jacket over her head. Like an arrestee or a kidnap victim, neither of which drew especial notice in downtown Brooklyn.

Sleepyheaded Tuesday hadn’t slept a wink that night, or lost any time sending off a rescue mission when Carole was back late. The former-rich girl was searching the net for detectives or mercenaries that might be needed, when her partner returned to her with a passionately tight embrace.

“Sorry about the dress.” Tuesday made a muffled noise against Carole’s grateful heart, “Hey, do I smell funny?”

“A little bit. But you’re still Carole, I’m still Tuesday, and I mean to love you more every day. Is, um, Amer…?”

“…he’s still the coolest. Always will be.”

Carole drew back, with a smile that was pure bittersweet. Wiped her eyes. Naturally, she told Tuesday everything she and Amer had done. Her girl’s blue eyes went wide; they needed to sit down in the trailer to slow her quickening breaths.

“…mine and Roddy’s first time wasn’t anything like that. I was in such a panic I had to just, um, jump on him, and he was so nervous as well. Our _third_ time was wonderful. But, oh, Carole…why on Mars did _we_ never make love? Oh no, that sounded weird–!”

“It’s okay, Tues.” Carole grinned, gently stilling both of Tuesday’s flapping hands, “You don’t even know how much I want to share the love with you, right now…but that’s the path not taken. We took a different one. You’re my best friend.”

“…can’t we be a little more, sometimes?” Tuesday whispered. Her eyelids dipped, her blush was wildfire, “We both want it. I, I’m sure Roddy won’t mind a bit…”

“He ought to. I…I’m sorry, Tues. I’m no player, and I couldn’t ever share you.”

She turned away, heart hammering. Tuesday draped bare white arms around her neck.

“It’s not fair, Carole. How can I snuggle up to Roddy every night, when you’re sleeping alone? Who will you ever love like Amer? Who could he ever love like you? You were always the sensible one, through it all, how could you ever fall for a man who you couldn’t be with?”

“He’s not the only guy in the system, Tues. We’ve been too busy with work; I’ve got a whole world of incredible guys to meet, before I even think about getting hitched. Amer and me, we had our night of dreams…but this the only road ahead for us, the choice we made together.”

Carole couldn’t feel a micron of sorrow for herself. A brilliant, beloved singing star with the best friend in the universe–wealthy and safe–touring across old Earth to where her father was. If the one thing she lacked was love, she had no right to cry–she was far, far more sorry for Amer.

Through the night of Earth, as far as he could go, Ezekiel would never stop singing and struggling. _‘Representing Mars ‘til I feel like an alien’_ –the Earth-born Martian wouldn’t stop bringing the dreams of Mars to Earth’s barrenness, peace between the worlds. One crummy, second-string underground gig at a time, lost in the din of despair, but Ezekiel had started lower and nothing would grind him down.

They’d learnt what they’d always known, dreams weren’t enough to lift two orphans from Earth to Mars. Work and compromise, blood and sweat, were all that could ever do it. He would keep fighting for his dreams on Earth, alone, Carole would go home to Mars and live out hers–once she’d finished being Tuesday’s maid of honour. She could not be sorry for herself–not even for Amer, still stronger than she’d ever known before.

-0-

A crowd of adults and children had been waiting an hour, to see them off on the next leg of the tour toward Memphis. While Carole and Tuesday snatched a quick breakfast, and their support team metaphorically trimmed sail and weighed anchor, Carole unwisely steeled herself to look at a newsfeed.

It seemed that beloved singing starlet Carole Stanley had vanished while touring the wastelands of Earth; she _had_ been found the next morning, but with torn clothes and a dazed manner. Had she been attacked by the desperate thugs that invested the ruins of Earth, while bravely going out alone to directly observe their poverty? The depths of mindless savagery among Earth slummers could only be equalled, it was clear, by the recklessly pure goodness of Carole and Tuesday….

Tabloid newsfeeds could really get carried away, like a whole pack of beavers in a china shop. Carole almost wished the stupid story had attacked her, instead of the Earthers she’d come to help. 

Tuesday went out to greet their fans, while Carole hastily put a call through to her father–he read all her articles–to tell him that she hadn’t been assaulted, she'd only fallen in love.

There was nothing Carole could do with her father but talk. She told him _nearly_ everything; not just holding back a little because he’d found Jesus five years into his sentence. He had nothing left that he wanted but to protect her, and nothing he could do but listen. Still, she felt him smiling from the other end of the line; the tears already stood in her eyes. 

“…he’s an amazing guy. Strong and serious–he’s been through hard times, but his songs are still, just…kickass. Have you heard Ezekiel’s songs, Dad?”

_“I don’t listen to much these days, except for your songs, Carole. That Skip guy is good, but they haven’t broadcast any decent songs on Earth, from Earth, for maybe twenty years. You’re serious about this guy, ain’t you?”_

“Yes, very much.”

_“He serious about you? Or do I need to have a talk with him?”_

“DA-AD! That’s not a good joke…” Carole wiped away happy tears, “We seriously decided it would never work out. He can’t come back to Mars. I can’t stay here on Earth. What we had–kids, singers, last night–I’ll never lose one bit of it. It’ll be precious, just as much as it hurts…”

 _“Carole…my girl.”_ After eighteen years apart, it had taken years for her Dad to say that. Carole truly started weeping, then. _“There, now. You’re going to be okay.”_

“Is it okay, Dad? I…smoked weed, we both…I promise, there’s no guy I ever wanted to do that with but him! I’m sorry.”

_“That’s between you and God, Carole. I never had no right to tell you how to live, since–”_

“You always did! You’re a good man, and you’re my father. I take my own way, that’s how I live, but I want you to be happy, and if there isn’t a way I’ll make one!”

_“My girl. I’m proud of all you are and all you do. You’re a strong girl, always. That means everything to me.”_

Carole’s mother hadn’t been strong; she heard the pain in her Dad’s voice. She squared her shoulders, wiped her tears away for good.

It had been a month after the Seven Minute Miracle, before she’d started messaging the quiet stranger from Earth. At lightspeed, his answer to a single message had usually come back the next day. Finding what they could talk about had been a struggle. Twenty years ago, Dan Stanley had been a lover of R&B, and rap, but the silence of prison was mildew in the soul. You pumped iron, watched the drug deals and endless chess games. Tried not to think of the music you never heard or the motherless child you would never see, without forgetting; in both hopelessness and hope, madness always waited.

You prayed again for forgiveness–even if you were guiltless of any crime, Carole would have screamed to heaven, that should’ve ever taken her father’s freedom and her mother’s life. Freedom was free, the bible said, and forgiveness–but when you were still in prison, your daughter alone in an orphan-devouring world, the light of God warred with the darkness of doubt and frustration. It wasn’t until he’d come to Mars on parole and seen her, Dan had told Carole, that colours from heaven had rushed back through his world of grey.

He’d learnt to fight with his bare hands in the old U.S. Army; though their training had added many years to his endless sentence, he’d diligently begun teaching Carole self-defence. Told halting stories of his army days and his hopes for her. Six months in, Carole’s big record contract had funded an interplanetary phone call every week–to her real father, she finally understood. What Amer was to her she couldn’t ever be sure, but Dan was her father from always to forever. She’d told Mars that her father was a good man, and she was going to Memphis in order to tell the Earth. After twenty years nothing could possibly mess that up, not even love. 

“Dad, I’m going to talk to your lawyers again. When this tour’s over, I won’t rest until they change your parole so you can come back to Mars for good. It’s a beautiful planet, full of good people. We’ll share our doings and each days with each other, at last…we won’t be living different lives in two worlds, reaching over a void to each other…ever again.”

“ _Carole, you've done so much for me already; everything. You can do anything you want to. Anything–four years ago, you showed them all.”_

Carole couldn’t bear to tell her father what twenty-two years had taught her. Nothing came from wanting, nothing came without faithful work, and miracles were only once in a lifetime. Within a minute of saying goodbye to her father–silent, next to Tuesday in the van–there was no one to keep her thoughts from Amer Souleyman. How much she missed him, hours after their parting. How many years she would hurt for, how long before any woman or man made her go wild like he had. It was not fair, she could have screamed it out, but for wandering Earth-borns life was never fair.

She could take it. She could think of how Amer must be feeling now, and it gave her strength. Tuesday was beside her, glancing up with a smile from her phone, as ragged children banged on the side of their van–they were finally moving on. She had to be the luckiest girl in the solar system. She was not alone, she could not be lonely.

-0-

_“…walking in Memphis._

_Yeah, walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale._

_Walking in Memphis… do I really feel the way I feel?”_

A week after Brooklyn; three hours before their last concert in Tennessee. Then Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle, then Rio and Sydney, Asia, Africa and Europe. It was still dizzying to look back and think how far a freeloading runaway and a part-timing Earth immigrant had come. Beyond Earth, Mars and the gulf between to the limitless stars–and drawing so many others after them.

All the marvellous techies and stagehands working their magic with microphones round the hall, and the terrified assistant producers (Poor Gus had been too ill to travel, but nothing stopped Tobe roaring about. Roddy was so busy, he and Tuesday had only stolen an hour of endearments and passionate snogging). And then outside the auditorium; all of the young people and battered hearts already crowding there with smiles and hopes. That they could be artists, builders, AI-designers and everything Earth needed. All they needed was the huge unending push that Carole and Tuesday were ready to give them, and someday a change would come.

Or perhaps it would come anyway, at the whim of fate. Perhaps Carole, Tuesday and Amer were nothing but singers with pretty, insubstantial songs, who would have done better to play for fun in a modest bar each week, and go home to loving husbands, rather than pouring out their years and loves into the shining, treacherous elfland of media and fickle public regard?

No; they had deported Ezekiel from Mars because they’d been scared of him. Everyone on Mars still knew what the government had done, and perhaps they still wouldn’t let him go back to Mars from fear of his songs. And he was only one lean and ragged street-troubadour, tilting at windmills–love and pain choked Carole’s gorge–while she stood with Tuesday at the head of the biggest force in music right now, like one of Roddy’s giant mecha bestriding the world with music.

It should have been Ezekiel, stood where they were–Carole knew it with every atom of her soul. His songs weren’t only dreams and courage, but pain, anger and justice. He’d been born to change the system, but he’d been silenced, banished–betrayed.

Carole and Amer. She could have stayed with him on Earth, found him on Mars, stayed with him on Earth…but in the end she didn’t care if the world changed, or kept up its dance of death and injustice. Tonight’s concert was the stage that hers and Tuesday’s songs deserved–no, needed, like crack cocaine. She could never give that up, not for her father or the boy who loved her.

Carole bit her lip, screwed up her eyes, clenched her fists. Nothing had changed since the orphanage. She was still the meanest selfish–

“It’s okay, Carole. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Tuesday was sat beside her, gripping her hand. Carole stared into her pure blue eyes. Her partner hadn’t left her side through the whole week, understanding her feelings perfectly. They had always been inseparable, five years–but when Tuesday finally tied the knot with Roddy, Carole knew very well that things would change. She’d lose her love, like Amer had lost her…but none of them would ever be alone they’d been before. She would not end up alone ever again.

One hour before taking the stage was lightning in the veins; _three_ hours before was a dust-devil of doubtings in the gut. Carole smacked her own face so hard that Tuesday winced. She smiled brightly for her girl and then stared diamond-hard at the empty stage before them. Her father would be at this concert; there was absolutely no excuse for not giving this her all.

“Carole…did you hear the news? At our Brooklyn show, there was an agent for a small studio in Nashville (Oh, it would’ve been wonderful if we could’ve played Nashville as well!), and, um, I think he must have loved Amer’s warm-up song for us. I heard he offered him a contract. Er, um, I’m so sorry if that’s weird or _distracting_ , but I thought you’d want to know…!”

“Yeah, you’re still a reckless little firestarter. Love that about you, Tues.” The blonde smiled like a golden puppy with relief, “You didn’t fix it did you? Amer would no way never want to owe his raps to charity, even from me or you–he’d rather starve.”

“How could anyone think like that?” Tuesday’s white brow crinkled with innocent distress, “Neither of us would have survived without each other, or the kindness of so many friends. If you really want anything, I think you have to find it any way you can.”

“How about what you lose on the way?”

“We do whatever it takes to find all of that, as well.” Tuesday showed her phone, and a two-word good luck message from her mother, with a heartbreakingly lovely smile.

Carole smiled and looked away–down to the wildfire inferno her best friend had set guilelessly in her heart. She had made her choice. It would be a disaster, she wouldn’t even be able to play a note, she couldn’t…two hundred miles. He might not even be there. She would regret it forever, whatever she did…

As she barely held in a groan of frustration, her phone chimed. She’d had two messages in the last fifteen minutes, from Mars. The first one was Crystal’s number. Her equal, not her idol, now, but she still almost dropped the phone.

 _Dear Carole. I know something of what you must be feeling now. We give so much for our songs, and our choices. I loved dear Skip so much, leaving him felt like an immolation–but, weak as I was then, I couldn’t ever have survived as my true, full self if I had stayed. I would have held him back too; I terribly hurt him, but he_ is _the best and strongest man who ever walked on Mars. I still feel love for him, and I no longer regret anything. Be strong, Carole. It gets easier. I’m prouder of you than I can say._

The second message was from a friend almost as close as Tuesday–the girl they had watched movies beside all night and carried through the worst stretches of rehab. Her singing career had never reached the same heights as her ex-rivals, since the Seven Minute Miracle–but Angela would be Angela, always.

_You turnip-headed twit, Carole. If you let go of the man you love, you’ll lose something you will never get back. Tell that gloomy twit that you need him. Tie him down if you have to–you know how I wish I could have done that to Tao. I wish I was with you and Tuesday, now; she’s not exactly shy anymore, but I’ve still got lots to teach her about putting her foot down. Seriously, I wish I was with you, Carole. We’ve all cried together as much as we’ve cheered, but please–this time, for me–won’t you just go for the happy ending you always deserved?_

-0-

“…thank you, Memphis! Thank you everybody!”

 _Everybody_ roared back. The lights glared blue in Carole’s eyes, as moisture glued her white dress to her body and her throat thrummed with effort well-spent. They’d delivered a focused, footloose, heartstealing set of modern soul and blues pieces, and everyone loved them. Carole didn’t want to know just why her heart felt like it was breaking.

In her shining black gown, Tuesday was radiant; Carole fixed on her partner’s joy as the blonde spoke on.

“Happy as I am, this is a very special evening for Carole, and for someone else who she loves very much. Carole?”

Carole clasped a beloved hand once, smiled once for the crowd–exactly what were they so eagerly expecting? Then her smile vanished; her lips finally showed the serious heart of her life’s path, and her feelings. The auditorium was silent.

“You all know I grew up in an orphanage, here on Earth. I was a girl on her own for seventeen years…almost. I didn’t believe I’d ever had any parents who cared for me. Because my Dad had to spend twenty years in the big house, for defending the woman who was carrying his baby from a mugger. He didn’t even know I was alive, until he saw that baby of his on _Mars’ Brightest_ …I’m truly sorry, I can’t say my own mother ever showed me the way. She died without my Dad, without me. _Earth_ put those chains on our family, that should have been protector and mother to us all. I can’t say my father showed me the way, or that he gave me the strength to do every fragging thing I ever did. I’m truly sorry for that, because Dan Stanley is the best father on Earth, the best man! He protected me, in spite of it all! He thought of me with love for twenty parted, silenced years and that means so much! I LOVE YOU, DAD! THANK YOU, DAD! You made me, all I am!”

Stretching out her hand, in tears onstage, she didn’t feel like she’d ever felt any more than she’d ever spoken like this–never so deep from her heart, in a life of singing out loneliness and love. The ushers gently escorted Dan Stanley up to the stage–blinking and flinching from the light, with the shock-tracker still bound on his leg–to the furious applause of the ground.

He kissed Carole’s cheek; she could feel how long he’d waited. She lifted his fist in the air like a champion. Tuesday put off fainting with emotion long enough to kiss him too. Dan clearly spoke some words about how proud he was of his girl, thankful to God above and all her friends, but he was visibly fearful of the tremendous crowd. Two decades locked in with hundreds of murderers did things; Carole would always be furious at it, but she would be there for him from now on, always…wouldn’t she? But this moment in from of thousands was for only the three of them; even as the dust storm of applause for her wronged father rolled on and on. Amer would have been so proud of what she’d said…

…but he wasn’t there, and he would never be. She had left him. The pain almost drove her to her knees.

When Dan had gratefully shuffled back down to the crowd, Carole gripped the mike again. It should have been a perfect moment, all for her Dad, but words spilled out her heart that she could barely control or understand.

“There are too many people on Earth tonight, like my father, who were parted from the ones they love–too many of us on Earth still are. By wars, by wrong laws, by poverty and distance…even by our different dreams. I will always feel your sorrow, your anger, your struggle... _I will always love you_. Whatever drek went down back then…all the little time we spent together is the most precious memory. Even if it hurts to love, even if it feels useless, please…don’t stop loving. There’s no reason we have to be lonely. This…will be our final song in this amazing city. It’s from Tuesday’s second-favourite movie. It’s for her, and my Dad…and one more person, a righteous, beautiful man who deserves so much more…but I’m just a singer. This is all I can do.”

Tuesday’s eyes went wide and her knees gave way. The AI on backing tracks efficiently pulled the music and set it flowing through every speaker. Carole steadied her grip on the mike and filled her aching lungs with breath. 

_If I should stay,_

_I would only be in your way._

_So I'll go, but I know,_

_I'll think of you every step of the way…_

_And I will always love you._

_I will always love you._

_You, my darling you..._

_Bittersweet memories,_

_That is all I'm taking with me._

_So, goodbye,_

_Please, don't cry,_

_We both know I'm not what you, you need._

_And I will always love you!_

_I will always love you, oh..._

_I hope, life treats you kind._

_And I hope you have all you've dreamed of._

_And I wish to you joy and happiness_

_But above all this, I wish you love._

_And I will always love you_

_I will always love you_

_I will always love you_

_I will always love you_

_I will always love you_

_I, I will always love you_

_You, darling, I love you_

_Ooh, I'll always, I'll always love you…_

Silence. Then a final dust-storm of weeping, rapturous applause. Carole felt every joy and sorrow that filled thousands of human beings, as their cheers swept around her–but the love of her own heart was that all she held, and it was barren.

The spotlight dropped in time to hide her eyes. She left the stage hand-in-hand with Tuesday; moving forward together as they always had.

-0-

It was about two hundred miles from Nashville to Memphis, as the crow flies, over some terribly bad roads. It was about four hours later–the interviews and afterparties were done, Tuesday was fast asleep, Carole was pleasantly chatting with her dad over some cocoa in the trailer. When Ezekiel staggered up to Carole and Tuesday’s door with three of their bodyguards closing in on him. He had blood in his purple dreads and looked much as if he’d crashed the motorbike he'd started on, in the vicinity of Jackson, TN–but even bullets wouldn't have held him back. His life was held in his fists, and he was ready to give all that was in it.

"Ezekiel. Amer.” Dan cautiously nodded, “Heard about you.”

“Glad to hear it, Dad.”

Carole had never seen her father look so angry. He didn't move or say a word, and she breathed out.

“Amer, this is… _what is this?_ ” She stepped quickly between them, waving off the bodyguards, with a just a jacket thrown over her dress from the show, “Did you really think you could charge in like some hardcore gangster and sweep me off my feet…?”

Her voice faded, as Amer dropped to both knees in the grass.

“Two hundred miles, over a song? I never had enough _sense_ to be a gangster, Carole. I’m just that soft, dumb kid, Amer, who thought he could save the Earth, save Mars with music. Who heard that song you sung, and remembered–I’m a dumb kid, do anything for the girl I love, and that's you, Carole. I can't let you go this time...you're just too _cool_. They’ll be drek and roadblocks, whatever we do together, but I'll break through, I'll endure. If I'm with you, Carole, fighting the solar system will be _nothing_! That's how I feel, best I can say it. What about you? I mean, how do you feel about–?”

“I think you heard me sing that, Amer Souleyman. My best friend, my love. I love you, and I always will.”

Carole plopped down in the grass. Fingers wound gently between her own; Amer's gift, the tiny, private miracle she could never, never have deserved...but the unchained joy in his eyes belonged to her. Music filled up the hollow vaults of her heart, familiar and indescribable as childhood dreams.

They would get married quietly and quickly, to the delight of all their friends and the awe of a starstruck world. Dan Stanley did become the only father Amer had ever had, and took to him well enough.

The paparazzi were still going so crazy about the supposed 'shotgun wedding' three months later, Tuesday and Roddy had quite a lavish wedding with no serious disturbance–Tuesday said it was the best present Carole could've given them. Mars immigration did call Amer the worst kind of fraud, threw the book at him; the tabloids called Carole, Amer and even Dan some very snide, ugly and unromantic things.

But nothing could break them, nothing could stop them. They were an army of two with an army of friends; bearing each other through hell was better than all they'd endured alone. They were husband and wife on different planets for the worst year of their lives, but they never stopped fighting until they were together on Mars. Carole and Amer; their own story of soul, rap and invincible love would finally begin. 


End file.
